


People We've Been

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: On the Story [2]
Category: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: 19th Century, M/M, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 02:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16630730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Jack doesn't believe in past life regression, but it's one of the more harmless things he and Gil could be getting paid to do for a story.Gil absolutely believes in past life regression, and he's thrilled to bits to know that some things never change.





	People We've Been

**Author's Note:**

> While my computer is in the shop and I can't work on ANY of my WIPs, the only thing I can do is, I can sign in here on a borrowed computer, and write directly into the story field in the middle of the night, so this is not the most edited thing I've ever written? But it is-- I hope-- cute.

   Really, the past life regression thing... it's practically a vacation. No tromping through the woods banging around trying to attract non-existent monsters, no getting mixed up with weird cults which usually turn out to be based around fad diets and not aliens or ancient gods or any of the things they write about. No getting a black eye trying to expose illegal labor practices only to have the story turned into something completely different... the only whack job they have to deal with is the hypnotist, and technically she's only a whack job if she believes her own press, which Jack doubts. She's a charlatan.

 

   Gil is one hundred percent sold on her whole schtick. Gil wants to be put under so he can experience his past life-- one of his past lives-- and really, he's the perfect patsy for a scam like this. Gil isn't stupid, not really. From the preliminary reading-up Jack has done, some people are too stupid to hypnotize. What Gil _is_ , is naïve. And gullible. And desperate to believe. And imaginative. Once he's under, he'll take the slightest suggestion and run with it, and there won't be any telling him it's fake, though Jack is pretty sure he's going to tell him several times anyway. Jack's never been good at sitting back and abiding bullshit.

 

   The hypnotist's office is also her home, a little A-frame cabin out in the mountains, and it's very... about what he'd expect. Beaded curtains separating off the kitchen and giving the loft bedroom some privacy, shelves of crystals, a brass bowl on a pillow, bundles of herbs and feathers and various little tokens and totems. It's a mish-mash of every kind of animism and polytheism and 'exotic' culture that could possibly add street cred to the woo-woo mystic act. Disgusting.

 

   Gil eats it up. Gil asks if he can touch various little things, oohs and ahs over all of them, points out a wall hanging of an appropriately mystic nature, his enthusiasm undimmed when Jack just rolls his eyes.

 

   "You're sure you don't mind if I do it?" He asks, already settling down to lie on her couch. "You don't want to?"

 

   "I don't want to." Jack pulls up a chair and readies the tape recorder. Even if it's all Gil's imagination, he can write it up, and then the editing process will replace any doubt and scorn in his authorial tone with the same kind of ooh-ing and ah-ing Gil's already doing.

 

   Gil gives him a smile, wriggling a little to get comfy and folding his hands over his midsection. And okay, Jack's not one for abiding bullshit-- or wouldn't be if he didn't need to hold his nose and get paid-- but that smile is hard to resist. It's the kind of smile he'd like to kiss, if they were alone. He reaches out and nudges Gil's hair where it falls into his eyes, instead. 

 

   "Knock yourself out." He adds, and he sits back to record it all. There's a touch of the cliché to the whole act, but Gil goes under, and when prompted, confirms that he's experiencing a past life. Well, of course he does. Sweet, suggestible Gil, of course he thinks he's experiencing a past life and not just a fantasy.

 

   "There's a big house." He says, his tone slow and sleepy and weirdly flat, for a man so ordinarily animated. "I think I live there. Old-timey. And my clothes are... With a long coat and a... thing. A fancy neck thing. And I'm standing by the... you know. The old-timey garage."

 

   "Do you mean a _stable_ , Gil?" Jack prompts, raising an eyebrow.

 

   "No, just the one for parking... parking in. Carriages, not horses. There's a carriage coming up the road, I must be waiting for it. I've been waiting... a long time. I've been coming out every day to wait, I've waited for hours... Oh!" Gil turns his head slightly, though his eyes don't open, angling himself towards Jack, the slack, sleeping expression on his face lifting into a smile. "Jack, it's  _you_."

 

   "That's nice." He smiles. Silly, clearly a product of Gil's imagination, but... nice. Given a whole new world to imagine, Gil has placed him in it. Has decided that in some other time and place, he'd be waiting for Jack to come home to him.

 

   "We know each other."

 

   "We  _do_ know each other." Jack points out. "In reality."

 

   The hypnotist gives him a look at that, which he gamely ignores. 

 

   "You work for my father."

 

   "I  _do_ work for your father."

 

   "So you're not supposed to make love to me." Gil continues, with that same flat, sleepy, hypnotized tone, as if this was something he could just... just  _say_. Jack sputters, glancing over to the hypnotist, but she doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with that.

 

   "Ah, so you have a connection from a past life." She says sagely. 

 

 _Bullshit_ , Jack does not say,  _we have a 'connection' in this one_. 

  

   "But you do anyway." Gil sighs. "Jack, you have long hair. Oh... _I_ have long hair. You untied it when you pressed me up against the side of the garage and kissed me."

 

   "You couldn't imagine me being more careful than kissing the boss', uh, boss' kid right... right out in the open?"

 

   "It's not imagination, it's the past." The hypnotist presses. 

 

   "It's _romantic_ , we _missed_ each other." Gil says, with just the barest shadow of a familiar pout. "You have a long black coat on... and a blue ribbon in your hair. And a hat. Oh. No, I knocked your hat off. I'm sorry, Jack."

 

   It's the apology that gets him. The surrealism of Gil apologizing to him for something he fully believes he once did in a past life. And Jack absolutely can't write a story about this. He can't.

 

   "I tied it back for you before you left. My father sent you away on an errand and I wanted you to have something of mine, and... you swore you would hurry back to me. The past had... a lot of layers. But you must have a lot of practice with undressing me, because--"

 

   " _Outside_?"

 

   "Oh. Well, a little. But then you... you drag me into the carriage, and it's... there's two benches? Facing in to the middle? So I'm--  _oh--_ sitting on one, and you're between them, you know, down on the floor?"

 

   Gil shifts a little. His face is noticeably pinker than it was when he first went under-- at least, Jack's noticed.

 

   "Pull him out." He demands. "Pull him out, get him out of there, stop-- stop this."

 

   The hypnotist does. Gil blinks up at the ceiling, turning to look to Jack. It's the same look he gets most mornings, the rapidly fading confusion, the warmth just touched with some amorous intent... How many mornings has Jack woken with Gil sleeping against his chest, seen him come to... How many mornings has he almost immediately flipped him onto his back, pinning him down and grinding into him? And how many of those did he spend lying to himself, saying it meant nothing... that there was any other reason to share Gil's bed but that he preferred it to being alone, that he preferred Gil to anyone else. That it was just nicer to get off with someone else than alone, and if that person was your roommate, well... How many mornings did he waste pretending they weren't lovers? Did he hold back from diving into Gil's mouth, whispering to him... No wonder, given the opportunity, Gil would invent some grand past with a big house and a version of Jack who was eager to run to him, to promise him things, to make love to him where they could be caught instead of pushing him away and snapping at him for casual touches in front of others? A Jack who never did him wrong with years of distance, of using him to get off and to feel wanted, and then... well, everything. Hell, Jack wishes this version of himself was real, too, in this life. Wishes he'd been as loyal as Gil over the years, as good to him as he'd deserved. 

 

   "Did we get a good story? Was I anywhere historically significant?"

 

   "Gil, we cannot use  _any_ of what you said." Jack says, and his tone allows for no argument on the subject, but he softens the blow by straightening Gil's hair again, fussing gently over him to soothe any upset.

 

   "Oh." His face falls. "Well-- Should we try again? I don't mind being hypnotized again if we might get something better out of it!"

 

   Jack thinks of all the many different historical periods Gil could cast them in and all the unpublishable things his brain could come up for them to do. 

 

   "No."

 

   "Well... then maybe you should."

 

   Jack's not sure how hypnotize-able he even  _is_ , given his opinions on how bullshit the whole past life regression thing is, but at least he can tell Mac they tried. And then they'll have to throw even more bullshit on Bullshit Mountain and make up a story about how Gil was present at some historical event or other, to sell fucking tabloids. This... was not his dream job.

 

   Not that he could leave it.

 

   He'd rather write anywhere else, but Gil is tied to his father's paper... and Jack, for better or for worse, is tied to Gil. 

 

  "Okay. I'll give it a shot." He says, and Gil seems so pleased by that, trades places with him and takes the tape recorder. 

 

   "Okay, Jack. Just relax and everything's just fine. And I'll be right here."

 

   "I know you will." He rolls his eyes, but he can't help a little smile for Gil, before he settles in to be told his eyelids are getting heavy.

 

   Actually, it isn't so bad-- he's made his feelings clear enough that the hypnotist dispenses with The Show of it and just puts him under without all the goofy extra-bullshit bullshit. 

 

   He's aware that the man on his arm doesn't really look like Gil, or not exactly, but he still sees Gil's face. He's aware that he won't look like himself, or not exactly, but he sees his own face in shop windows. They're walking down the street, he'd guess... maybe Victorian, or maybe pre-Victorian, but not by much. 

 

   Suggestion, of course, that's what it is-- he remembers what Gil had said and has worked it into his own vision. Waistcoats and cloaks and knee-high boots cut lower in the back, and Gil with a lace-edged cravat. Gil in silk and velvet and  _colors_ , and he's suddenly aware of things. 

 

   For instance, that there's a sharp divide between them that their friendship shouldn't bridge. Well, 'friendship', of course they're lovers. They're lovers in his hypnosis-induced wild imaginings because they were in Gil's, not because past lives are real. Because Gil  _is_ his lover, so why wouldn't he think about him? But to the rest of the world, they're friends. They walk arm-in-arm because it's normal for same sex friends to do. The problem people have isn't that they're both men, it's that Jack is  _poor_. Not exactly impoverished, but even then, what he has, he has because he works for Gil's father.

 

   That also comes from Gil's, that doesn't mean anything. It's realistic, but no more than it might be from reading books and watching movies, for all Jack knows. 

 

   Jack is accused of having airs above his station, he's aware of that even though no one says anything to him. And Gil, Gil is accused of being such a clumsy, silly oaf that his father has to hire some asshole to be his friend. And people say nasty things now and then, but not about the fact that they're lovers. Even Gil's parents have no idea, and they know Jack sleeps in Gil's bed. Do they imagine it's for warmth? In the present-- in  _reality_ \-- that was what Jack had told himself the first time. 

 

   He sleeps in Gil's bed, brings him back little trinkets when he's sent off on travels-- nothing much, little things. Shells from seaside towns, a penny's worth of ribbon or some tourist token from distant places, small bouquets or paper bags of sweets from near ones. And sometimes, carefully hidden etchings, which was how they'd taught themselves a few things Jack really hopes he's not dutifully reporting on in a monotone. 

 

   Maybe he's only talking about the 'present' he's experiencing in the past-- well, again, 'past'-- and not stray thoughts about Gil and sex and sex with Gil. Just about walking arm in arm, knowing rumors dodge them, but not the right rumors, and Jack imagines it hurts in this imaginary past as much as it would hurt him in the real world, to be accused of social climbing, of using Gil because Gil's parents have money and Jack doesn't. Of being  _mercenary_ with him. Gil's been ill-used by him in the past, but never like that, and there are few accusations that would upset Jack more. To write off all the reasons he does want to spend his time with Jack, to accuse him of... of being so  _mean_ about it, but then...

 

   Some people probably do say it. At least, that somehow he's sucking up by being Gil's friend, that it's for a career boost if not worse, as if Jack even wants the job he has, as if he'd do it for any other reason than that Gil is there and now that he and Gil have worked together as long as they have, the thought of leaving him... Jack puts up with his job to be with Gil, and not the other way around. 

 

   They stop in front of a haberdasher's window, Gil immediately offering to buy Jack the hat his eye has fallen on.

 

   "You mustn't." He says, and Gil only cuddles into him, looks at him with those big blue eyes. "Gil, really, you can't."

 

   "You bring me presents all the time."

 

   "Yes, and all of them put together cost less than that hat. And it's too nice to wear with any of my clothes, anyway-- Don't."

 

   "But I could buy you new clothes."

 

   "Gil... I don't want people to think... I don't want it to look as if I like you for your money."

 

   "It doesn't look that way." Gil frowns. "... Does it?"

 

   "Not to us. But to some people. And I don't want them to say it, as if there aren't enough good reasons to like you. Or as if I'm... I don't know. Like that. A person who would use you like that. Now come away-- I'm meant to be running errands, you can't hold me up if you want to come along when I go out."

 

   Of course, Jack is aware he'd been the one to stop, but the Jack of eighteen-hundred-and-something doesn't seem remotely aware of his hypocrisy, and the Gil of eighteen-hundred-and-something is as sweetly patient as the real thing, when it comes to allowing Jack his dignity-preserving nonsense now and then. They travel through the marketplace, in and out of shops and stalls, bargaining their way into a deal here and there, and Jack imagines he could pocket the pennies they save and let them add up alongside whatever meager salary he earns, but of course he doesn't. Not because it wouldn't be honest, even, but because it pleases him too much to buy candy when Gil's back is turned and to present it with a flourish when Gil is no longer distracted by some street performer, and to see his face light up, to have his arm grabbed tight to once more and Gil's head thrown down onto his shoulder as though he'd given him something more impressive than a small handful of hard candies that can't possibly be all that great. Who actually enjoys hard candies? 

 

   Well, Gil does, actually. He invariably takes one of those little unappetizing strawberry candies from bowls on receptionist's desks or the countertop at the bank when waiting for a teller, Jack's seen him go through a whole bowl of them when they'd been at his grandmother's house, Jack tiptoeing around trying to avoid this ancient woman and her questions about why exactly he had needed to accompany Gil... 

 

   With Gil, she'd been the weirdest combination of icy and indulgent, and Jack wonders if there's some distant matriarch here, too, in the imaginary world Gil has infected him with, where they walk arm in arm down cobblestone streets, where Gil tugs him into an alley so that he can pop one of the candies into Jack's mouth, and look at him with promise shining in his eyes, and briefly press their lips together even though anyone might come down an alley on a shortcut, even though they're each holding a candy in their mouths and it's awkward and weird and slightly sticky...

 

   Jack might have developed a taste for hard candies himself, if he lived in a world where Gil conditioned him to like receiving them... Which is ridiculous, because Gil's the one who ought to be treated to things, even little things, who deserves them and who likes them and who... who makes such a big deal out of so little, who's gotten so little for too long and who ought to get more, but Jack doesn't know what more to give him and he's not in the position to give him half what he deserves.

 

  Gil, pleased to be treated and forbidden from buying Jack an expensive hat-- let alone the even more expensive wardrobe to go with it-- buys him a coffee instead, and despite the nineteenth century veneer, it's not so different from coffee dates they really have. Gil will drag Jack in to a place he likes the look of and insist upon buying him a coffee, because Jack has done this, that, or the other thing for him, and because Jack  _likes_ coffee, and Gil doesn't not like coffee, but every time he fixes his own, he makes a face after his first sip before giving in and adding more sugar. Blushes when Jack catches him making a face. And they sit, their feet resting together under a small table, and they talk, and they reach for each other every other sentence or so, touching hands, arms, shoulders-- faces, sometimes, Jack patting Gil's cheek gently or pushing the hair back from his forehead...

 

   This is just their life, really, how it could possibly be a past life when A) Jack doesn't believe they exist, and B) it's just their own life... it's just Gil, his Gil, sweet and ridiculous and attached to him for reasons he can't quite fathom. It's just...

 

   When he comes out from under hypnosis, he doesn't remember any of what he might have seen-- invented for himself, been influenced towards-- but Gil is looking at him, eyes shining like... 

 

   Like the day he'd pulled him close and promised there was no one else, promised he was done pretending there ever could be. Like Jack had just... given him something. Something immense.

 

   "I'm afraid to ask." Jack says. 

 

   Gil backs up the tape player, hits play.

 

 _"This is such bullshit_." Jack's own recorded voice says, not much emotion to it, out of it. " _Gil, promise me you'll never buy me a top hat. I'd look like such an asshole. Gil, I'm such an asshole... This really is some bullshit._ "

 

   "Uh... apologies for the, ah, language." He glances over at the hypnotist. 

 

   "Mm-hm." She raises an eyebrow, arms folded. "You owe me for a second session."

 

   "Yeah, yeah, sure. Gil, pay the lady."

 

   Gil pulls out the company checkbook, with a dizzy, distracted little 'okay, Jack'. The tape continues to play, though for a long moment it's just his breathing, and then the hypnotist prompting him to describe what he sees.

 

   " _Gil... is this all it takes, really? It can't be this easy to make you happy. I mean it is... it's this easy in real life, I don't know why I'm surprised, you're... You follow me around all day doing a bunch of boring crap and you'd probably do it even if I didn't buy you candy, because you're better than I deserve, but the way you look when you get it... I should be bringing you... I don't know. Jewels and perfumes or... whatever it is, you know... whatever it is traveling lovers in books bring home, I don't... I don't know, you know. Not cheap bits of things. Crappy... hard candies. And you light up like that's just what I did anyway, and you kiss me. I mean not in the street, but like you do now, in private, as soon as we're in private. Like when you waited with me through the bank and the DMV and the other thing, because I had to run... I had to run all my errands on one Saturday because we'd just got home from that... that stupid Elvis sighting, and we had two days at home before the next stupid thing, and I slipped that lollipop into your pocket and you practically molested me in the car, remember that? Anyway, this-- this is some bullshit, because you're just taking me for coffee and it's just like real life except everything's all... Oliver Twist-y. Gil, have I ever told you... I really hate Oliver Twist?_ "

 

   Jack stares dumbly up at Gil. Gil is not remotely concerned with Jack revealing that they had made out in a car in real life. Gil stops the playback and touches Jack's cheek gently. 

 

   "Did you pay her any hush money?" Jack asks at last.

 

   Gil laughs. "Jack, a mystic living in a cabin in the woods doesn't want hush money--"

 

   "Wouldn't object to it." She cuts in.

 

   Jack digs a twenty out of his wallet and throws it at her, getting up on shaky feet-- why is he shaky? Why does he feel so emotional over things he doesn't remember? What's to even feel emotional about, a fake vision of buying Gil candy and going for coffee? Something about a top hat?

  
    "There. Consider yourself hushed. Come on, Gil, let's get out of here. Let's find an even less reputable hypnotist who will just plant something nice about the fall of Rome in your skull, we could write a story about that. This is-- We're not writing a story about this."

 

   "We went to the same place." Gil smiles, as Jack takes his arm to steer him out to the car. "That's what she said it sounded like."

 

   "I was influenced by the things you said, rattling around in my subconscious, I did not have a vision of a past life, this is the only life I've ever had."

 

   "If you say so, Jack." Gil says, and he's unbearably smug about it.

 

  Well... maybe it's bearable. Maybe there's no harm in Gil believing they've been lovers in other lives.

 

   Hell, it's better than chasing down Bigfoot and Elvis and the Loch Ness Monster.


End file.
